Interview with Niklaus Wirth

Professor Niklaus Wirth, creator of the Pascal programming language and Turing Award winner, took some time for me on February 9, 2021 to chat a little about his career.
Anchor links:
00:23 CV
06:38 Greetings
08:01 Early developments: Turing machine and Zuse's "Plankalkül"
10:55 Zuse Z4 at the ETH Zurich
11:08 am Swiss computer pioneers: Eduard Stiefel, Heinz Rutishauser and Ambros Speiser
16:25 Time after graduation as an electrical engineer
16:55 Emigration to Canada and the USA, California
18:22 Time at Laval University of Québec, tube computer Alvac III-E
20:43 Difficult exams at the University of California Berkeley
22:19 Early programming languages Fortran, Lisp and COBOL
22:38 Neliac and doctoral thesis “Euler, a Generalization of Algol”
25:22 Wirth's tendency towards clarity and tidying up
26:24 Assistant to Professor Harry Huskey and Bendix G-15
27:19 Standford University and Burroughs B5000
27:49 Algol 58/60
29:13 Blocks with BEGIN / END vs. brackets
30:24 IFIP Working Group 2.1
31:34 Pascal
33:10 Procedure for selecting the language scope
34:48 Bootstrap process for Pascal with Scallop
36:21 Pascal-P with a hypothetical machine
38:55 Borland Turbopascal and Delphi
40:29 Modula a successor to Pascal inspired by Mesa
42:57 Oberon as successor to Modula
44:53 Problem of the large software base with commercial languages like C ++
46:06 Idea of an intelligent translation between programming languages
49:03 Why didn't Xerox PARC market their innovations?
50:58 The Lilith workstation
54:56 Encounter with the IBM PC
55:31 The Lilith project with Prof. Richard Ohran
58:10 The name Lilith
Links:
- Homepage of Niklaus Wirth: people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth
- Oberon project: www.projectoberon.com
- Blog about the film: www.holzheu.de/schweizer-infor...
Recommended Playlists:
- Computers simply explained: • Computer einfach erklärt
- Computer Museums: • Computermuseen
- Contemporary witnesses of computer history: • Zeitzeugen der Compute...
Music used:
- Successful Connections In A Technological World (MusicLFiles): filmmusic.io/song/6998-succes...
Changelog:
03/10/2021 First version

[@guldilo]

Sehr gutes Interview! Herzlichen Dank!

[@IgorDimitrov]

rest in peace, titan of computer science, my personal hero. You will be deeply missed.

[@holyshit922]

I like Pascal it is better than C especially when you start programming
It could be better but it seems that only fans around Florian Klaempf develop it
C is just popularised not necessarily better

[@IgorDimitrov]

@@holyshit922 There are so many things about Pascal that are very beneficial for beginners. I think the best way would be to start out with pascal Pascal and get the programming fundamentals right. Only thereafter introducing C to contrast how these two languages implement various equivalent programming concepts, and show differences between a practical, hacky language and a more academic, clean one could very educational and create better programmers.

[@StefanK.]

Eine lebende Legende!

[@llwwll576]

Nun ist NW von uns gegangen - in Pascal und Modula schrieb ich MathLogic Quine, BuralliForte sowie Hao Wang Programme .

[@daniel-schenker]

"Ich muss ganz offen sagen, ohne die Turingmaschine bin ich sehr gut durchs Leben gekommen.”
Besten Dank für das tolle Interview!

[@davidasher8100]

RIP

[@starc0w]

Wow! Vielen Dank für dieses spannende Interview!

[@AmigaSwiss]

Love it ! Thank you 🙏die Lilith fehlt fest in meiner Sammlung, aktuell ca 300 Exponate

[@DreesenJos]

Wer eine Lilith mal ausprobieren mochte : ich habe einen Lilith-emulator "emulith" geschrieben, lauft auf Linux / Windows und OS-X.

[@david203]

Modula-2 had some unique features, such as coroutines, that are not always available today.
Modula-2 hatte einige einzigartige Funktionen, wie z.B. Coroutines, die heute nicht immer verfügbar sind.

[@peterrothenberger8377]

BEGIN live END

[@david203]

The Z4 was just rented for the five years it took to construct the ERMETH.
Der Z4 wurde nur für die fünf Jahre gemietet, die es dauerte, den ERMETH zu bauen.

[@peterrothenberger8377]

PROCEDURE life
BEGIN work and love END

[@peterrothenberger8377]

IF he was well THEN i would be happy

[@john-lenin]

I grew up with these languages. (But thank god I never became a programmer!)

[@Dr.Z.Moravcik-inventor-of-AGI]

Please also note that the times when you had to work at night at the ETH (university) are long gone.
I am working (with or without a computer) from my bed 24H a day. And it works fine.
Only the big problem is that human body was not made for such kind of activity.
We need to give the hard programming work over to my robots with BRAIN!
ASAP.

[@ulrichulrich5810]

Vevey statt Wöwö (falscher UT)

[@MichaelHolzheu]

Danke, ist korrigiert! Jetzt weiß ich endlich auch den genauen Namen des Ortes :)

[@ulrichulrich5810]

@@MichaelHolzheu guter Stil, habe keine Korrektur erwartet. Vevey ist der Firmensitz von Nestlé.

[@peterrothenberger8377]

ELSE i worry

[@ulrichulrich5810]

gekrüppelt statt geknüppelt (falscher UT)

[@MichaelHolzheu]

Danke, ist korrigiert!

[@ulrichulrich5810]

@@MichaelHolzheu Danke fürs Korrigieren, bin noch nicht ganz am Ende. mir sind noch ein paar unwesentliche Abweichungen vom Gesprochenen aufgefallen, die es sich nicht lohnt anzupassen. falls die UT manuell erstellt wurden: Chapeau!